


Death kindly stopped for me

by epersonae



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Chess with Death, Pre-Bureau of Balance, Pre-Canon, they're a black hole of gravitas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 16:03:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13685040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae
Summary: The Raven Queen's chief bounty hunter finds a woman who has died more times than usual. She asks to play a little chess in hopes of escaping the Eternal Stockade.Set after Lucretia's misadventures in Wonderland and before the establishment of the moon base.





	Death kindly stopped for me

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Emily Dickinson](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/because-i-could-not-stop-death-479). Thanks to @hops for being my chief enabler, and to @weatheredlaw for some useful feedback and excellent copyediting.
> 
> If you've read [A Separate Deal With Death](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11410356), this is an alternate version of these two coming to an agreement: at a different time, in a different place.

She was in her tiny office in Neverwinter; it was late, and the blueprints for the base were barely illuminated by a dim Light spell. She rested her elbows on the desk and her head on her hands and she sighed. So far, nothing about this has gone as planned.

So it seemed only fitting that at that exact moment a bright pinpoint of light appeared just in front of her, followed by the sound of something tearing: not paper or fabric, but the very stuff of reality. Followed by a man, a very handsome man, in a dark suit with a long cloak over it, carrying a scythe.

“Time for you to come with me, wot?” he said.

She took a deep breath before saying, “No.”

His scythe cut an arc through the air but landed harmlessly against the Shield she’d thrown around herself. He frowned and began his own casting, objects around the room floating around him.

“Raven Queen, right?” she said wearily.

He paused.

“Yes, and you’re coming to the Eternal Stockade —”

“For crimes against the order of life and death. Is there a book in this reality?”

His frown deepened. “Yes, and your name is —”

“Right there, along with Davenport? Please don’t disturb him, he’s finally sleeping through the night.” She tapped a finger to her lips. “Is it traditional here that one may offer to play a game for one’s soul? I best you at a game, you let me go?”

“I have been known to play the occasional game with a mortal.” He smiled. “I ought to warn you, I’m very good at games.”

“But if I win….”

He nodded. She dropped the bubble. He stepped forward and picked up the single chess piece sitting on her desk. The last piece she sacrificed before losing twenty years of her life. The red queen, her  _ memento mori _ .

“Chess?” he asked.

She blinked, took a deep breath. She used to be very good at chess. Maybe she still could be. She always figured that the proprietors of Wonderland cheated at chess, as with everything else, but she hadn’t played since then. She nodded.

He pulled up a chair and sat on the other side of the desk; she stood and took down the rest of the set, dusty with disuse, from the bookshelf behind her.

* * *

They played six games, until nearly dawn. All of them ended in stalemate, and he saw the seventh game about to head the same way.

She should’ve been exhausted, flagging; hell, she should have been at least a little unnerved, having spent a night playing chess with the Grim Reaper. But she was calm and collected, moving her pieces deliberately, barely giving him a glance as she played. A little smile as she got ahead, a little frown as he matched her moves.

Honestly, he couldn’t sense any necromancy anywhere around her. She wasn’t a lich, there weren’t any undead in the vicinity, and he couldn’t even detect the presence of necromantic implements or spells. Just a very serious middle-aged woman with an office full of papers.

And yet. Her name — and this Davenport’s — were in his book of bounties. They had violated the law. Not only that, but she knew enough to know why he was there and to offer this game. There was no way she was innocent, but she had never claimed innocence.

Her hand hovered above the board, and her tongue just barely stuck out as she frowned down at the pieces still remaining. For a second, her face lit up with a smile, but then she shook her head.

“Stalemate, I’m afraid,” she said finally.

“That’ll be seven rounds. Ready to come along quiet like?”

She scoffed.

“You haven’t bested me yet, Mister Death. Shall we call it a draw for tonight and try again tomorrow?”

“It’s Kravitz,” he said. “And I can allow for one more night of this...diversion. But no more. I’ll be back tomorrow.” He smiled, almost a competitive smirk, as the scythe reappeared in his hand. “Make sure you’re well rested, Lucretia.”

* * *

She let out a long sigh of relief as she pushed the remaining pieces off of the board. It certainly wasn’t the first time one of them had encountered an agent of the Raven Queen. Being anomalies who had died and come back to life again seemed to attract that sort of thing. But it had never  _ mattered _ before.

One at a time she put every piece back into the box, each of them fitting neatly into their spot. It wasn’t Merle’s set, that one was still on the Starblaster, waiting for the day he came home. This was the set he gave her when he taught her to play.

She ran a hand through her close-cropped hair. This was serious business and would require very careful planning. The blueprints were rolled up and placed in the corner. The base was important as well, but she couldn’t do her work from the Astral Plane’s ghost jail. She returned to the bookshelf and took down several long-ignored volumes:  _ Chess Praxis _ ,  _ Dynamic Chess Strategy _ , and  _ Practical Chess Endings _ . She’d bought them on a whim, back when she and Merle used to play between parleys. She’d almost thrown them away entirely, but a hope for the future had prevailed.

Then she took out her stone of farspeech. “Maur, I'm going to need you to take Davenport to the lab for a few days.” A pause. “No, it’s nothing serious. I have some work to do and I think he’ll be….” She stopped to think, not wanting to worry Maureen. “It’ll be less of a distraction if he’s with you.”

If worse came to worst, at least Davenport would be out of harm’s way for a little while, and with that she could set herself to prepare. 

* * *

When he returned to the small office in Neverwinter, it was no longer a whirlwind of papers. The desk was pristine and pushed to the back of the room. The woman Lucretia, his bounty, sat ramrod-straight behind a small table holding only the chessboard and two large glasses, a faint smile playing on her wine-dark lips. 

He raised an eyebrow. 

“You prepared,” he said. 

“Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me,” she said lightly. 

“Pardon?”

She shrugged. “Nothing. Another world.”

“Whenever you're ready,” he said as he sat across from her. 

She took out a bottle of wine and asked, “Can you partake in this form?”

He nodded, working to keep the smile off of his face.  _ Let her drink all the wine she wants _ , he thought. It would just make this game easier for him. She poured into both glasses until they were full, then took a small sip. He did the same.

“Excellent vintage,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve had this before. Where did you…?”

“I have my sources,” she said, again with that faint smile. There was a sadness in her eyes that belied the smile. “Shall we begin?”

And if he’d thought she would fumble from drink as she played, he was entirely wrong. If anything, her moves were more inventive, more clever, more devious. But they were well matched, play for play, even as her glass emptied.

After the second stalemate, she stood and carefully removed her sweater, hanging it on the back of the chair before returning to her seat. She tucked a pale curl behind her ear as she set the pieces back onto the board, then rolled her shoulders dramatically.

After the fourth stalemate, she drained the dregs of her wine, licking her lips.

“Another?” she asked. “Or are you ready to call it?”

He scoffed, and she laughed, a warm throaty sound.

“I had to try,” she said. “Can I refill your wine?” His was down to perhaps a quarter of a glass, and so he nodded. Wine didn’t affect him unless he willed it, or unless other, more powerful, forces were in play. Which they weren’t. And it was very good wine.

She drank more slowly after that, obviously using it to take little pauses before making her moves, but as much as he played at the top of his game, she was still every bit his match.

After the sixth stalemate, she rolled up her sleeves to the elbow and flexed her hands. Then she opened a small round window. A breeze fluttered the curtains. 

“Getting a little warm,” she murmured, fanning herself. Again he restrained a smile as he felt his prize come within reach. 

“Another glass of wine?” he asked, tapping a finger on the rim of his glass. Another quirk of a smile. 

“Thank you kindly but no,” and she mimicked his gesture on her own, still half-full. “Let's have another game first, shall we?”

“After you, madam.”

A seventh stalemate. A game he'd been so close to winning, spent most of the game believing he had won, and this woman, with no magic, certainly no necromancy, halfway through a second glass of wine had played him to yet another draw. 

She steepled her hands together and tapped her fingers. The first light of dawn filtered into the room. 

“You're curious,” she said. “I would be, if I were you. You aren't detecting any necromantic energy, I don't appear to be undead, and yet your book…. And even at this age...” She closed her eyes for a second and he could see her swallow as if holding back something — “You don't think I should be able to play you to stalemate? Yet here we are.”

“Go on.”

“Tomorrow. Tomorrow let us play again, and while we play, I will tell you a story. And after that…. Well, if the game does not decide for us, then perhaps my tale will change your mind.”

“That seems unlikely. Heard a lot of sob stories from necromancers in my time. Would take something….” He waved a hand. 

She closed her eyes again, took a deep breath, and gave him a long hard stare. 

“This is something, I promise.”

He stood, nodded once, then summoned his scythe.

“Tomorrow.”

She nodded in reply. 

* * *

She took out the bottle of wine. The label in a language unknown to Faerun, vintage of a vineyard of a far dimension she would never see again. Something rare and precious for perhaps her last night on the Material Plane. 

Again, two glasses, a chessboard neatly set. She wondered if Merle ever felt nerves like this, when he was preparing for parley. He'd always seemed so relaxed as he went to certain death. Then again, there'd been a certainty of life afterwards. 

Which was why she was setting out a chessboard, and wine: to prepare for the consequences of all those deaths. Or perhaps — she still hoped — to forestall them. She hoped she would not again fail in this game as she had failed before.

She was not surprised by the sound of reality tearing apart, nor by the flash as the reaper Kravitz appeared in her office. She was a bit startled, though, and so she jumped. 

“Evening, Lucretia,” he said, straightening his jacket, smoothing a hand over his braids. 

“Evening. Wine?” He nodded. She poured. They sat in their seats, facing each other. The first two games passed in silence and ended in stalemate.

“So what's this story that you think will save you from the Eternal Stockade?” he asked after they'd both made their opening moves of the next game. 

She took a sip of wine. 

“How many suns were in the sky where you were born?” she asked.

“One? Is this a trick question?” He frowned. “Are you trying to throw me off of my game?”

“That would be a handy side-effect,” she said, placing a piece and taking one of his. “Well, my ward and I” — it hurt, to refer to the captain, who was practically her father, that way, and to leave out the others, but it was safer for all of them — “we were born in a world, under a sky with two suns.”

She waited as several moves went by in silence. This was her final play: it had to work, or everything was lost.

“I know of no such world,” he said finally.

“Of course you don’t,” she said, forcing a smile. “It existed in an entirely different reality.” She tapped the board with one fingernail. “Stalemate.”

“Hm, yes.” Together they reset all the pieces onto the board. Before he moved his first piece, he said, “Existed?” 

For a long time, she just stared at the board. She could see the gears moving in his head, feel his eyes on her as he idly tapped his chin with his index finger. In her mind, she could see that first time, the Hunger enveloping everything she’d ever known.

“Our multiverse was...destroyed? Engulfed? Devoured, perhaps. I think that is the most accurate term for it.”

Over the next two games, she explained — in the narrowest way possible — how they had become adrift in space and time, how the Hunger had pursued them, how they had died and come back to life and died again over those hundred years. She tried not to drink her wine too quickly.

“All this,” he said finally as he set up his pieces for the sixth game, “just you and Davenport?”

She’d tried, as best she could, to avoid mentioning the others: Taako and Magnus and Merle, it wasn’t as though they even knew what charges they’d face, and much as she’d been at odds with Barry, she didn’t want to send the Raven Queen’s bounty hunter after him. Lup, though: for a moment she considered mentioning Lup in the hopes that he could find what she had not. Still, better safe than sorry. She was good at saying the bare minimum that was true without giving everything away.

“You’ll understand,” she replied, “if I choose not to implicate anyone else.”

He frowned. “You’re taking responsibility for these others?”

She made her opening move without answering, let him take the next move. Before she touched another piece, she looked at him again. Handsome Death, watching her thoughtfully, his gaze almost tender. She looked back at the board. She could feel the game moving towards stalemate already, as she’d once felt loss in every cell of her body in that other game.

“There’s a lot I’ll be answering for, someday,” she said.

“Hmm. And you’ve stopped this business of dying over and over?”

She glanced out of the window at the waxing moon. Two moons, soon enough, and then….

“My whole goal,” she said, steepling her hands, “is for that business to never be necessary again. I swear to you on….” What would she even swear to, now? “I swear that I will work tirelessly that no one meet that fate ever again.”

He nodded.

“I should speak with my queen,” he said, “but consider this a bargain between us. See that you keep to the laws of life and death, and you will keep out of the Eternal Stockade. Break those laws….”

“You have my word.” She held out her hand and he shook it. She shivered. He gave her the faintest quirk of a smile.

“One last game?” he asked.

“Another time,” she said.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a vague idea for a post-canon epilogue, we'll see if I ever get to it.


End file.
